Today's Tidbit: Sea Otters Help Us Fight Global Warming

Sea otters are the largest members of the weasel family. When people started hunting sea otters for their fur, their population fell from roughly 225,000 to about 1,500, until the International Fur Seal Treaty took effect in 1911. Since the international ban on otter hunting, the population has rebounded back to roughly 107,000. Why does this matter? Because sea otters eat sea urchins, and sea urchins eat sea kelp, and sea kelp eats carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide causes global warming. That means that the more sea otters there are, the more kelp there will be to absorb CO2 from the... more